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Honestly, I feel like YouTube recommendation is the _only_ good thing YouTube has lol. I often see a ton of complaints about the recommendations but I've hones

by robswc 4y ago

Honestly, I feel like YouTube recommendation is the _only_ good thing YouTube has lol. I often see a ton of complaints about the recommendations but I've honestly never had an issue. I know that yes, you click on one video and now all the sudden you get 100s of that type... but it sorta works for me since it seems like that "effect" wears off just as fast as it starts. For example, I have a friend that's into cars. I watched a few car videos and then 50% of my recommendations were car videos. It works for me though, because usually those videos are genuinely interesting. I haven't watched one in weeks tho, so going to my home I see 0 car related videos. I will 100% believe everyone though when they say it just doesn't work for them. Just wanted to share my experience.

crazygringo 4y ago
Yup, works fantastically for me as well. I almost never go to my subscriptions because every new video I want to see is right there on the home page. I super love the categories at the top too. If I want all cooking videos instead of just 2, it's a single click. It's really neat to see it use machine learning to tell me what my ~15 top topics are. And it's entirely correct.
nitwit005 4y ago
There is some incentive to want you to watch car videos in that situation, as someone with a recent automotive interest is an ideal person to show car ads to.
- robswc 4y ago
  True. I do have premium though (hopefully that doesn't make a difference) + adblocker so I never get traditional ads. Another example though... I just watched a few videos about fake self help gurus and influencers. I now have 3/10 recommended videos about that. 2/10 a random meme (which do look funny, tbf) and then the rest are subs.
donio 4y ago
Not sure what we are doing differently but for me it's pretty much random and useless. It seems to be a mix of mostly old videos from channels I follow anyway and random junk I am not interested in. I am sure I could find something new and interesting in there if I looked long enough but the signal/noise ratio is very low. Old account with thousands of views and likes/dislikes.
- robswc 4y ago
  In all honestly, I could have a very low bar lol. I do believe it though. I've seen people post screenshots and they have a ton of nonsense recommended. I've rarely ever clicked "don't show me this" too.
- slacka 4y ago
  Do you prune your history of garbage? Every time I clear out all the click-bait, poor quality, and accidental picks out of my recent Watched History, I find the quality of the recommendations go up. Are you subscribed to some high-quality channels?
  - donio 4y ago
    I don't prune the recommendations (since I don't use it) but my subscriptions are always carefully curated, about 50 channels I think. My subscription feed is all good, that's what I use as my landing point.
iroh2727 4y ago
Completely disagree. I think what is great about YouTube are the subset of creators that make genuinely good content, and especially those creators you follow consistently for a long time and really enjoy and get something out of. The algos are useful if I follow so many creators that I can’t keep up, or occasionally I get some good unexpected content. But my favorite creators were all recommended me by other people, not algos. Also, the algos just peddle in commoditized interactions like Likes and Watch Time and Subscribes. They can only optimize for meaningful creator-observer relationship so far as that’s measured by Watch Time, Subscribe, etc. Not to mention some obvious problems how clickbaity the recs are for new/anonymous users or on videos with few views. Or the whole Elsagate incident (which no doubt continues to be a problem). Overall I still like YT but I don’t think the commoditized algos are helping much. Just let me get recs from friends or search for what I want. Don’t try to get me to doomwatch easy content all day… and especially don’t try to get kids to doomwatch easy content all day.
- robswc 4y ago
  I can certainly agree there should be a separate algorithm for under 13 year olds. I've seen a fair number of family or friends with toddlers and you check out what they're watching and 9/10 times its literal nonsense. 3D renders of spiderman jumping on a bed or in GTA just running around, lol. Very odd and you can certainly get some bad content in the mix because they don't know what they're doing.
sytelus 4y ago
Most people don’t understand here that folks at YouTube have probably ran thousands of variations of their algorithms and their current system is likely the best yet for keeping highest engagement on average. The issue might be that majority of the population might love recency bias. Folks here are not representative of general pop but they get overrun by majority preferences.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  That's valid, but a bit depressing. It means that YouTube will never be able to accommodate me. Hmmm... maybe that's the realization I needed in order to finally give YouTube the boot. Thank you!
- robswc 4y ago
  Really good point. It seems like some people do get stuck with a really bad variation and are justifiably vocal about how bad it is. Perhaps one day everyone could compare and see if it really is just preference or that some people have something gone terribly wrong. I will admit, I usually see more tech-oriented people complain about it.
cruano 4y ago
But just look at that same behavior over time. Say you searched for car videos yesterday, and today you are searching for basketball videos. Old youtube used to be very simple and recommend similar videos to the current thing you are watching, so you would get basketball videos when you were looking for basketball videos. Now, it will do that for some but also put car videos in the recommendations as stuff you "might like". Not only that, it will probably recommend the same car video you watched yesterday because you liked it yesterday so surely you'll love it today too right ? This only gets worse as you add more "unique" topics to your searches and follows. It doesn't matter what video I'm looking at, I get the same recommendations for all of them.
- robswc 4y ago
  Interesting... I can't say I've seen this type of recommendation behavior but I totally believe it. The recommending the same video twice seems like such an easy problem to solve too...

by robswc 4y ago

crazygringo 4y ago

Yup, works fantastically for me as well. I almost never go to my subscriptions because every new video I want to see is right there on the home page. I super love the categories at the top too. If I want all cooking videos instead of just 2, it's a single click. It's really neat to see it use machine learning to tell me what my ~15 top topics are. And it's entirely correct.

nitwit005 4y ago

There is some incentive to want you to watch car videos in that situation, as someone with a recent automotive interest is an ideal person to show car ads to.

robswc 4y ago
True. I do have premium though (hopefully that doesn't make a difference) + adblocker so I never get traditional ads. Another example though... I just watched a few videos about fake self help gurus and influencers. I now have 3/10 recommended videos about that. 2/10 a random meme (which do look funny, tbf) and then the rest are subs.

donio 4y ago

Not sure what we are doing differently but for me it's pretty much random and useless. It seems to be a mix of mostly old videos from channels I follow anyway and random junk I am not interested in. I am sure I could find something new and interesting in there if I looked long enough but the signal/noise ratio is very low. Old account with thousands of views and likes/dislikes.

robswc 4y ago
In all honestly, I could have a very low bar lol. I do believe it though. I've seen people post screenshots and they have a ton of nonsense recommended. I've rarely ever clicked "don't show me this" too.
slacka 4y ago
Do you prune your history of garbage? Every time I clear out all the click-bait, poor quality, and accidental picks out of my recent Watched History, I find the quality of the recommendations go up. Are you subscribed to some high-quality channels?
- donio 4y ago
  I don't prune the recommendations (since I don't use it) but my subscriptions are always carefully curated, about 50 channels I think. My subscription feed is all good, that's what I use as my landing point.

iroh2727 4y ago

Completely disagree. I think what is great about YouTube are the subset of creators that make genuinely good content, and especially those creators you follow consistently for a long time and really enjoy and get something out of. The algos are useful if I follow so many creators that I can’t keep up, or occasionally I get some good unexpected content. But my favorite creators were all recommended me by other people, not algos. Also, the algos just peddle in commoditized interactions like Likes and Watch Time and Subscribes. They can only optimize for meaningful creator-observer relationship so far as that’s measured by Watch Time, Subscribe, etc. Not to mention some obvious problems how clickbaity the recs are for new/anonymous users or on videos with few views. Or the whole Elsagate incident (which no doubt continues to be a problem). Overall I still like YT but I don’t think the commoditized algos are helping much. Just let me get recs from friends or search for what I want. Don’t try to get me to doomwatch easy content all day… and especially don’t try to get kids to doomwatch easy content all day.

robswc 4y ago
I can certainly agree there should be a separate algorithm for under 13 year olds. I've seen a fair number of family or friends with toddlers and you check out what they're watching and 9/10 times its literal nonsense. 3D renders of spiderman jumping on a bed or in GTA just running around, lol. Very odd and you can certainly get some bad content in the mix because they don't know what they're doing.

sytelus 4y ago

Most people don’t understand here that folks at YouTube have probably ran thousands of variations of their algorithms and their current system is likely the best yet for keeping highest engagement on average. The issue might be that majority of the population might love recency bias. Folks here are not representative of general pop but they get overrun by majority preferences.

JohnFen 4y ago
That's valid, but a bit depressing. It means that YouTube will never be able to accommodate me. Hmmm... maybe that's the realization I needed in order to finally give YouTube the boot. Thank you!
robswc 4y ago
Really good point. It seems like some people do get stuck with a really bad variation and are justifiably vocal about how bad it is. Perhaps one day everyone could compare and see if it really is just preference or that some people have something gone terribly wrong. I will admit, I usually see more tech-oriented people complain about it.

cruano 4y ago

But just look at that same behavior over time. Say you searched for car videos yesterday, and today you are searching for basketball videos. Old youtube used to be very simple and recommend similar videos to the current thing you are watching, so you would get basketball videos when you were looking for basketball videos. Now, it will do that for some but also put car videos in the recommendations as stuff you "might like". Not only that, it will probably recommend the same car video you watched yesterday because you liked it yesterday so surely you'll love it today too right ? This only gets worse as you add more "unique" topics to your searches and follows. It doesn't matter what video I'm looking at, I get the same recommendations for all of them.

robswc 4y ago
Interesting... I can't say I've seen this type of recommendation behavior but I totally believe it. The recommending the same video twice seems like such an easy problem to solve too...